


There is A Crack in Everything...

by aperfectpirouette



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, But Some Things are Different, Coulson is kind of the baddie, F/M, Family, Finding Family, Fitz is an unsung hero, Forgiveness, Friendship, Rebuilding S.H.I.E.L.D., Redemption, Rooted in Canon, Skyeward - Freeform, Teamwork, vigilantes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-22 20:59:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15590601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aperfectpirouette/pseuds/aperfectpirouette
Summary: (...that's how the light gets in.)Before leaving, Skye turned back to the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. and quietly promised, “I will find out where you’ve imprisoned him. We don’t have so many safe places to run to. I’ll find him, and then I’m gone.”Coulson lets out a heavy exhale.This is how it starts.





	There is A Crack in Everything...

**Author's Note:**

> I intended this to be a short and sappy Skyeward fic. Without my permission, it grew into this 11,000-word monstrosity. I maybe should have split it into chapters, but I'm stubborn and like the flow of it as one, long fic. If you read this all the way through, consider yourself gifted with virtual chocolate chip cookies. Happy reading! -pirouette

Their love story has always centered on their ability to find each other.

 

(This is how it works.)

 

xXx

_ Slam! _

 

Philip Coulson startles when his office door rattles on its hinges. Gathering himself quickly, he takes a deep breath before looking up from the file he’s reading. There’s only one person who would dare storm in here like that, so Coulson takes a few seconds to collect his waning patience before interacting with his resident hacker.

 

“Hey, Skye.” He can’t help the smile that slips into his voice. No matter how ragged he is, how frustrating the S.H.I.E.L.D. rebuild has been, how badly he wants to stop putting out fires, he’s always happy to see the girl - even if she’s clearly angry about something.

 

His happiness dampens a little, though, when she doesn’t immediately respond to him. Usually so vocal, Skye’s silence as she stands there with her arms crossed and a fire in her eyes is disarming. Coulson is confused. He’s been away from the Playground for a few days recruiting a new doctor for their cause, so he’s completely unsure as to what he’s done to earn the young woman’s ire.

 

His best bet is to get her talking; he can’t fix anything if he doesn’t know what’s wrong. As Coulson stands to straighten up his office, he, with careful nonchalance, asks, “What’s wrong, Skye? Anything happen while I was gone?”

 

Skye follows him with her eyes and continues glaring for another moment before she strides over to his computer and plugs in the flashdrive she’s apparently been clutching. He is too busy pretending to file paperwork and noting her body language to pay attention to what she’s doing on the screen (in his experience, he usually can’t keep up with her when she’s at a computer anyway, so he just waits).

 

After some furious clicking, Skye violently rotates the screen to face him and all but growls out “What the  _ hell _ is this, AC?”

 

Despite the fact that Coulson is now the acting Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., Skye hasn’t dropped the old nickname. No one else addresses him so casually, but she’s always had a thing against following rules just for the sake of decorum. Sometimes it irritates him - like now, for instance - but rather than rise to his irritation, his play is to turn tables and gain control of the conversation. He slowly moves his attention from his filing cabinet to her face where he meets her hard expression straight-on. They stare at each other for a few seconds before he finally looks at the screen.

 

He’s greeted with Grant Ward’s file, and his stomach drops.

 

The first emotion that courses through Coulson is anger: everything always seems to come back to Ward, especially where Skye is concerned. Then there’s frustration; the only way she’d have access to this is if she’d hacked S.H.I.E.L.D. The “how to rebuild S.H.I.E.L.D.” kit from Fury included a heavily-protected, top secret hard drive that still hid some of the organization’s most safeguarded secrets (things even Maria Hill and Natasha Romanov didn’t know about). The files were  _ supposed _ to be untraceable. After they arrested Ward and milked him for Hydra intel, they managed to secure some  Hydra files, including the one John Garrett kept on his trainee. Coulson read it and immediately had it saved to the secret hard drive. He had to keep the file from Skye.

 

He should have known better. She really was  _ that  _ good. Pair her skill with the fact that she was in love with their prisoner, and you had a lethal combination for secret-keeping. Coulson must be more exhausted than he thought - he really should have known better.

 

“Skye,” Coulson sighed. “You have to understand -” But Coulson knew there was no covering this up. Skye could sometimes be a human lie detector and she was  _ not  _ buying the excuse he was about to utter.

 

“No. Stop lying to me. Is it all true? Juvenile hall? Garrett kidnapping him and abandoning him in the woods with no food or shelter? Five years of no one but Garrett brainwashing him? And after all that -”

 

Coulson can’t remember ever being angrier.  _ Why can’t she just let Ward go? _ He doesn’t want to yell at Skye, but he has to make her understand. He can’t include duplicitous or mentally-compromised agents on his new team, can’t have them compromised. “Does any of it matter, Skye? Any of the reasoning? He still betrayed us! He’s Hydra!” Coulson was trying not to lose complete control of his anger, handing control of the situation to his young prodigy.

 

“Bullshit, AC. Bullshit.” Skye wasn’t yelling, she was the quiet kind of furious - and Coulson’s lived long enough (he’s had two lifetimes) to know how dangerous she currently was. “He was loyal to Garrett. He wanted to save Garrett’s life. And what happened in the end?” 

 

Coulson pounced on the opportunity to speak, “In the end, he killed Koenig and kidnapped you to unlock the hard drive that has all of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s intel on it! He’s a murderer and a liar who was going to sell us out, Skye! Why can’t you see that?”

 

“Why can’t I -” Coulson winces at the anger in Skye’s voice. He wishes, more than anything, that he could understand where she’s coming from, could understand what she could possibly love about their prisoner. Right now, Ward is a source of information. That’s all. Yet here was Skye, defending him. “Why can’t I see that he lied to us? Why can’t  _ you  _ see that he’s been abused and brainwashed for almost fifteen years? And in the end, he overcame all of that and shot Garrett to save my life! 

 

“You weren’t at Providence with us, AC. And you weren’t on the Bus with us when he ‘kidnapped’ me. He never really tried to get the password from me, not really. He just kept talking about wanting to take the plane somewhere far away to start over, just the two of us. And then Garrett’s quinjet boarded the Bus and all hell broke loose. Garrett had a gun to my head and Grant shot him, for me! Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

 

Coulson blames his reply on the anger and exhaustion, “Frankly, Skye, no it doesn’t.”

 

Skye immediately deflated, and Coulson knew he played his cards wrong. “Wow,” she whispered. “My life means nothing to you, huh, AC? Just some collateral damage sacrificed in the name of keeping secrets. I can’t believe I trusted you.” 

 

Coulson is a little heartbroken at the shattered acceptance in her voice. She’s putting words in his mouth, of  _ course  _ he’d be upset if she were killed. He was tired of losing. “That isn’t what I meant, Skye.” He implored, begging her to understand. “You know I care about you, care about the team. I am happy that you aren’t dead. But one good deed doesn’t absolve Ward of everything he did to us.” 

 

Skye just shook her head as she turned to leave, sensing that the conversation wasn’t going anywhere. “That’s the thing, AC,” she said with a quiet edge to her voice. “He didn’t do  _ anything  _ to us, not really. Sure, he lied, but  _ you  _ called Garrett when I got shot, Grant didn’t have to tell him anything. He shot Hand, but it was staged and she’s fine. And we both know Koenig was an LMD. He stole the Bus and ‘kidnapped’ me, but he also saved my life. And the Bus, the secured hard drive, and I are now safe here at the Playground. So you tell me, Coulson, what did he really do to hurt us?” 

 

As Skye grabbed the doorknob, Coulson melted into his chair and closed his eyes to the conversation, refusing to give her an answer. He needs a new strategy. Skye doesn’t trust him, and that’s a problem. Before leaving, Skye turned back to the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. and quietly promised, “I  _ will  _ find out where you’ve imprisoned him. We don’t have so many safe places to run to. I’ll find him, and then I’m gone.”

 

Coulson lets out a heavy exhale.

 

(This is how it starts.)

  
  


xXx

 

Naturally, Fitz is the one who finds him. Fitz wishes he could brag about this victory to the team, he really needs more respect around here. Sure, he isn’t particularly useful in the field in terms of physical skill, but without his inventions, they’d all be dead by now. 

 

Fitz misses Ward. The two men had argued over that very topic several hundred times while on the Bus, but their mission to Ossetia had the specialist finally admitting that he owed his life to the engineer, solidifying their friendship. But then Skye got shot and Hydra revealed itself and the world fell apart. 

 

Garrett was the Clairvoyant. Ward shot Garrett to save Skye after kidnapping her and stealing the Bus for some reason. Ward  _ swore _ that he wasn’t loyal to Hydra, he just wanted to keep Garrett alive. Coulson took Ward into custody. For a while, Fitz doesn’t know what to believe. On the one hand, Ward seemed so sincere in his guilt. On the other hand, Coulson and Simmons were on a rampage attempting to convince everyone that this was all part of his act and that he is a monster. Fitz isn’t so sure if the guy who was his friend, who kept him alive, who loved Skye so intensely, could be a monster.

 

Fitz’s gut reaction to trust Ward is proven correct when he reads Ward’s file. A couple of weeks ago, Skye secretly slipped a flash drive into his pocket while he was taking inventory of their weapons. She snuck into the armory, staged a clumsy accident, gripped him for balance and whispered “Front left pocket. Only the two of us know what’s on it.” The engineer is the only person Skye trusts with Ward’s file (with his well-being) and it’s not something he takes lightly. Fitz reads it several times, and his faith in S.H.I.E.L.D. dwindles each time.

 

For weeks, they spend all of their free time planning a search and rescue. They can’t save Ward until they find where Coulson has hidden him.

 

Sneaking around a compound full of spies proves extremely difficult - especially when Coulson has saddled Skye with time-consuming and tedious tasks that are designed to keep her distracted. Fitz knows that Skye hates the pointless work, but not doing it will tip their hand. She does the pointless computer work, he develops some tech, and they lose a lot of sleep.

 

It takes eighteen days, but eventually Dopey picks up some footage. From his tablet that is connected to the D.W.A.R.V.E.S., Fitz watches the feedback of Vault D (a room he is ashamed to note he’s been in several times as it’s their tech storage closet) as May hands Ward a pair of clothes and fiddles with a tablet. It activates an electrical field that turns into an opaque wall and completely hides Ward from anyone who might go down those stairs or glance at the security footage.

 

_ Gotcha. _

 

That night, they start finalizing the rescue part of their plan. They’ve done most of the legwork already, so it comes together quickly. Once they solidify the plan, Skye hacks into the Playground’s security system and sees Ward (via camera) for the first time in two and a half months, and she smiles. It is the brightest smile that Fitz has  _ ever _ seen on her face and he promises, then and there, that he’d stand by these two.

 

The orphan. The victim. Two lost souls just looking for family. 

 

He will be that family. 

 

xXx

 

AC finally leaves the Playground six days after Fitz finds Grant. He says he’s off to talk to some potential S.H.I.E.L.D. recruits, but Skye recognizes that something in his voice is  _ off.  _ Coulson is lying, and that realization sits like an anchor in her stomach.

 

The plan was to  _ run _ . To rescue Grant, grab his hand, and never look back. 

 

But, not for the first time, Skye’s personal plans burn in the wake of a mystery - and she can’t let it go. She has to stay with S.H.I.E.L.D., has to come back and figure out what the hell is going on. 

 

But all of that comes after Grant is out of that damn cell.

 

The most important factor in the rescue mission is timing; Skye does a quick lap around the compound to make sure no one is wandering the hallways. Simmons is in the infirmary, helping the new doctor settle in to the compound. Mack is in the lab trying to develop a cloaking mechanism for their cars. May is training the few new recruits that Coulson brought into the organization. Their path to the garage is clear.

 

This is how it works.

 

Skye overrides the Playground’s security system (she’s almost offended at how easy it is to hack) and sneaks down to Vault D. There’s a slight tremble in her arms as she slowly climbs down the stairs. It’s been two months and eight days since she last saw him, looking broken after shooting Garrett, whispering her name like a prayer as May manhandled him onto a quinjet and whisked him away from her.

 

For all of these weeks, Skye has been looking for answers and sleeping in his shirt (she packed up all of his things from his old bunk on the Bus before anyone else got to it), praying that S.H.I.E.L.D. hasn’t killed him. She’s spent the last six days hacking into the security feed that AC hid from her, periodically checking-in on him, making sure that he’s in decent shape. He needs to be, not just for her peace of mind, but for the success of the rescue.

 

Everything is all set for their escape. She and Fitz quietly took over a quinjet and, under the guise of updating its cloaking function, rid it of all trackers and S.H.I.E.L.D. technology. They developed secure tablets, laptops, and phones that were untraceable. Fitz snuck weapons (both familiar and new) from the armory and loaded them into “their” jet alongside the boxes of Ward’s belongings, Skye’s duffle, and the small bag of clothes for Fitz they added just in case he ever needed to join them at the safehouse.

 

The safehouse. Grant’s safehouse that he shared with Skye all of those months ago.

 

_ It’s been two days since they left SciTech and the team’s been awarded a little bit of a break (a.k.a. Coulson is mourning Seth’s death and is refusing to accept missions from HQ). The time off suits the team, they spend time bonding. _

 

_ Skye knows she’s being too quiet, and she  _ knows  _ that Ward’s noticed - the slight furrow in his brow betrays his concern, but she tries to compartmentalize her emotions enough to tough out game night.  _

 

_ Unsurprisingly, she fails. The sniffling becomes constant and her eyes start to water, so she excuses herself from the game of Scrabble that Simmons is dominating. Skye seeks safety in SUV, and allows herself to cry. Like clockwork, Grant shows up minutes later and just holds her, curved awkwardly in the backseat of the car. He kisses her head, runs his hands through her hair, and quietly soothes her as she cries.  _

 

_ “You’re okay, sweetheart. You’re okay.” _

 

_ Eventually, Skye calms enough to tell Ward everything. She relays to him the information that AC told her about Lumley, about Agent Avery, about herself. She admits to being afraid of what S.H.I.E.L.D. will do to her when they found out, afraid that they’ll take her away, stash her at the Slingshot, experiment on her. She’s worried about how the team will react when they find out she’s an alien. She’s nervous about how  _ he’ll  _ react, now that they’re starting something romantic. _

 

_ Grant shuts her up with a kiss and promises that he’ll always want her. _

 

_ Once Skye has fully stopped crying, Grant slowly drags her around the Bus, taking note of where everyone is. FitzSimmons are back in the lab, Coulson is in his office, and May is locked in the cockpit. With everyone accounted for and minding their own business, Grant leads Skye to his bunk, whispering as he slides the door closed, “There aren’t cameras in the bunks, I need to tell you something.” _

 

_ As Skye moves to sit on his bed, she gives him a suggestive wink. The move is classic Skye - both adorable and sexy - and he’s happy to see that her mood has lifted at least a little.  He plants a lingering kiss to her mouth before grabbing a lockbox from his desk drawer that opens to his fingerprint. He pulls out a key and hands it to her as he sinks beside her on his bed. _

 

_ “Skye,” his voice is serious, but careful. “I promise to always protect you, but should anything happen to me, or to you, if anyone - any organization, any agent, anyone comes after you, I need you to promise me you’ll run and keep yourself safe.” _

 

_ Skye moves to interrupt, but Grant quietly shushes her. “I have a safehouse that no one knows about. It’s completely off-the-grid. My S.O. doesn’t know about it, S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t know about it, there’s no trace of the building ever existing anywhere. It’s in the woods in New Hampshire. Promise me that if anyone comes after you, you’ll run. And if you need it, you can go to that safehouse. I promise no one will ever find you. You and I are the only people who know it exists.”  _

 

_ “Grant, I - “  _

 

_ “No,” he insists as he caresses her cheek. “Don’t say anything, don’t thank me. Nothing. It’s a precaution. A safe place for us to run to, should anything ever happen.”  _

 

_ After Skye promises everything that Ward can get from her, he gives her the coordinates to the safehouse and tells her how to get past the security features. She commits the information to memory, knowing it’s too important to write down. _

 

_ Later, she'll worry about Grant and what’s happened to him that he feels going off the grid will ever become necessary; she'll mourn his childhood. Even later, while the two of them are flying away from Providence base and she’s still figuring out who he’s loyal to, she'll realize that he was protecting her not just from S.H.I.E.L.D., but also from Hydra. This is what secures her faith in him. _

 

_ No matter the circumstances, Grant is always looking out for her. _

 

Skye is standing on the other side of Grant’s electrical prison and gathering the nerve to drop the fence and see him again. She wanted a reunion that rom-com writers would be jealous of, but they had limited time. 

 

With a big exhalation of nervous and excited energy, she releases the wall. 

 

Grant was awake, as expected, and standing right in front of her. She briefly wonders how long he knew she was standing there - he had to have heard her come down the stairs. However, all of her wandering thoughts leave her when they finally make eye contact. She throws herself into his arms, inhales his smell, and - for a second - just exists with Grant.

 

“You’re here,” he choked out. “Coulson and May said you hated me and -.” 

 

“I didn’t know where you were,” she cries into his neck. “I’ve been looking, hacking. I found you. Well, Fitz found you. It’s a long story.” She allowed herself a long moment to just bask in the feeling of being in his arms again before she forced herself to focus. There would be time for this later. “We have to go. Now.”

 

She gives Grant all the credit in the world for not asking any questions (she’d be an inquisitive nightmare were the roles reversed). Grant just nods, links one of their hands together, and follows her out of the cell and to the jet. 

 

Fitz is there to see them off, “Ward, I hope you remember how to fly this thing. Skye’s pilot lessons haven’t been going great.”

 

“They let you fly a plane?” The moment is too intense, too important for his indignation; it’s too reminiscent of their early S.O. and rookie days. Regardless, it makes her laugh.  _ He’s here. _

 

“Not a plane. A jet. Sort of. I’ll catch you up as we fly. We need to get into the air, though, ASAP.”

 

The two climb into the quinjet, get some last-minute babble from Fitz about the new tech, and pull away from the Playground.

 

Once they’re airborne, he turns to Skye in the co-pilot seat, and asks the first of several thousand questions. “So, where we headed?” 

 

She can’t help the slightly smug grin that blooms on her face. “Home. To New Hampshire.”

 

His returning smile is radiant as he sets the jet’s autopilot. Once that’s done, Grant pulls Skye into his lap and nuzzles into her neck; they both breathe easily for the first time in  _ weeks _ .

 

“Damn it, Skye. I missed you.” It’s nothing more than a breath against her skin. But it’s enough for her to drown in. For a while, she allows it to just be the two of them. No S.H.I.E.L.D. mystery, no escape plan, just Grant and Skye.

 

(This is when it starts.)

  
  


xXx

 

Skye cries when she sees the scars on his wrist. It’s a few days after she rescued him from Vault D and they are wrapped around each other in bed. This is how it’s been since the jet: the two of them practically attached, each too afraid to let too much distance come between them. 

 

He discovers a new form of intimacy in those days. The sex and cuddling and constant touches are great, fantastic even, but it’s the  _ talking  _ that solidifies them as a couple.

 

He tells her  _ everything _ . About his family, juvenile hall, Garrett, his guilt. He confesses that he mourns Garrett, even though he knows the man was a monster. He appreciates that Skye tries to understand.

 

In turn, Skye catches him up on the Playground, Coulson, her suspicions. She tells him about growing up in an orphanage, bouncing around foster care, living in a van. Trust is new to both of them, sharing different shades of the same loneliness.

 

So when he wakes to the gentle caressing of Skye’s fingertips across the scars on his wrists, he knows he has to tell her about that, too. Has to explain what the isolation, guilt, mourning, and rage did to him.

 

He opens his eyes to her tear-filled ones.

 

“Why?” She asked.

 

“They told me you hated me. I’d killed Garrett in cold blood. I didn’t have anymore intel on Centipede or Hydra and had outgrown my usefulness. I didn’t know what else to do, Skye. I didn’t have a purpose.” 

 

“You can’t-” She’s crying too hard and stumbling over what to say, so he just grabs onto her, anchoring them both to each other.

 

“I’m still here, sweetheart,” he whispered into her ear. “I’m here with you. Babe, I’m not going anywhere, not like that.” 

 

It’s hours later when she brings it up again, “Promise me, Grant. Swear to whatever you hold dear that you won’t ever do that again. I love you. I want that to be enough to keep you.” 

 

“It’s enough, Skye. It always was.” 

  
  


xXx

 

The last thing Fitz wanted to do was pull Skye from the safehouse. Not only was she happy there with Ward, but she was  _ safe _ . Safe from Hydra. Safe from whatever plan Coulson was brewing. Safe with Ward.

 

But they all had to make sacrifices; this is something that Fitz thinks about every time he lies to Simmons. Truth, justice, and sacrifice. This was all starting to feel too much like how he imagined the early stages of war. And rather than be on anyone’s side, they were the understaffed, bleeding-heart vigilantes and _damn_ , he never saw his life going this way.

 

Before Coulson returned from his recruitment mission, Fitz, Ward, and Skye developed her alibi. When asked, Fitz told the rest of the team that he had no idea where Skye went (as far as the team knew, Skye breezed past him, muttered something, and flew away with one of the jets). However, this story wouldn’t fly with Coulson, so they invented a plausible narrative. 

 

This is how it went (as far as Coulson knew).

 

A Rising Tide member messaged Skye with a lead on her birth parents, so, with a hurried explanation to Fitz, she stole a jet to try to track down her family. They created a Rising Tide bio for their fake informant: her name was Allison and she had no hard feelings with Skye’s abandonment of the hacker group - she just liked a challenge. Allison traveled a lot and, when she was in China, Skye reached out through her old channels to request that her acquaintance dig around for something -  _ anything  _ \- that would link Skye with her parents. 

 

It was a believable story; to Coulson, Skye was impulsive and desperate to learn more about her past. The Director bought it, and if he thought it suspicious that Skye disappeared at the same time as the prisoner they weren’t supposed to know about, Coulson didn’t say anything.

 

Three weeks into Skye’s staged disappearance, Fitz was able to access Coulson’s super-secret hard drive, and what he found terrified him. It was time to bring Skye back.

 

_ Time to come home, Mulan. What do you & Chameleon know about Inhumans? _

  
  


 

xXx

 

She meets Kara Palamas when on a mission to bring down a Hydra Compound. Skye’s been back with the team for about four months, pretending to be AC’s perfect soldier while simultaneously passing along information to her boyfriend.

 

Skye and Simmons are tasked with finding the compound’s central office and bringing any usable intel or research back to the Playground while May, Bobbi, and Hunter bring down any remaining Hydra members at the base. It was supposed to be a quick and painless mission: Grant told her that Hydra abandoned this compound when they took over the Triskelion all those months ago.

 

Which is why she’s so surprised when she and Simmons open an office door and find a young woman strapped to some kind of machine. 

 

A dramatic gasp breaks Skye’s thought process. “Brainwashing,” Simmons whispers with some disgust. “We have to help her.”

 

As she begins hacking into the machine to stop it from working, she quickly radios May to tell her that they have a victim and to warn “Team Muscle” to be on the lookout for whoever did this to her.

 

Skye and Simmons are able to disconnect the brunette from the machine and bring her back to the Playground. They tried asking her who she was and what she was doing, but the stranger was weak and could only identify herself as “Agent 33.”

 

It was enough for Skye. She find’s Kara’s S.H.I.E.L.D. file and starts to puzzle together the girl’s life. She was a specialist, number 33, and went missing while undercover. She has an impressive list of kills and successful missions. Skye tries to merge the information from with the shell of a girl they find in the locked room. She’s pale, thin, unconscious, and strapped to a bed in the Playground’s medical bay.

 

Agent 33 (no one else at the Playground will call her Kara) spends two weeks in the Playground’s medical facility before Skye approaches her, and the two become allies quickly. It’s clear to everyone on the team that Agent 33  has a serious grudge against Hydra for brainwashing her, and against S.H.I.E.L.D. for abandoning her. Coulson wants to rehab her and bring her back to their cause, but Skye knows that Kara won’t do it. S.H.I.E.L.D. broke her too much. Skye gives her another option.

 

This rescue mission was entirely planned by Grant. Skye kept him afloat of what was going on with Kara at the Playground and was the one to suggest they bring her into their mini team of vigilantes. It was hard to deny: Kara was skilled, knowledgeable of the intelligence community, and angry. 

 

The opportunity comes six weeks after Skye and Kara become sort-of friends. AC assigns a solo mission to Skye - a simple, week-long espionage-only mission to gain information on an object called the Obelisk. Skye’s never heard of it, but she has Fitz and Grant researching it for her because she had enough on her plate with getting Kara to the safehouse and her near-constant secret hacking to figure out just what the  _ hell  _ Inhumans were.

 

Convincing AC to let her bring Kara - to “monitor her reactions in the field” - is easier than expected. He needs Agent 33 to be competent for his team, and he trusts Skye’s judgement. Skye almost feels guilty.

 

Skye and Kara are on a train to New Hampshire - they ditched the quinjet in New York, where Skye was  _ supposed  _ to be - when Kara finally asks. “So, what do you need me to do for you?”

 

Skye is surprised by the question: it’s so old-school Grant, focused on the job. “Uh, we just need more people on our team. Honestly, you’ll probably be stuck in the safehouse compiling information and strategizing until we have a better idea of what’s going on with S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra and, well...you.”

 

“Me?” 

 

“You were in the early stages of being brainwashed. While you were in the med bay, FitzSimmons made sure you didn’t have a tracker or any inorganic tech on or in you - they removed a tracker from your arm and pried some type of clear mask from your face. And they made sure your brain wasn’t completely fried or being controlled by anyone else.” 

 

“I was someone’s robot?” The outrage and heartbreak in Kara’s voice makes Skye a little sad.

 

“That’s what it looks like. Or they were trying to make you into one. You’re clean now, but we want to make sure you have some downtime to mentally and emotionally recover. Grant will be helpful with that, he had to somewhat go through it himself. And he’ll probably like the company.”

 

They talk until Skye steals a car and blindfolds Kara. She trusts the new girl, but their location really does have to stay secret. Skye is surprised at Kara, at her and Kara. She doesn’t have the best track record with female friends. 

 

When Skye parks in the garage of the safehouse, she turns to Kara. “Before I take your blindfold off and let you into the crazy, I need to know that you’re really committed to this. We’re a small team of four pissed off people, one of us is being hunted by several organizations. We’re outnumbered and in danger, basically functioning as lawless vigilantes who are trying to disassemble Hydra and maybee S.H.I.E.L.D. That okay with you?”

 

A slow, determined smirk blooms over Kara’s face. “Sign me up.” 

 

Skye removes Kara’s blindfold and the two girls take a second to smile at one another, a small, human moment in the chaos. Before they get out of the stolen car, Skye quickly stops her new friend and ally.

 

“Look, Grant’s not going to like this, so I’m going to ask now. Your first task is to punch me in the face and rough me up a little bit before I head back to the Playground in a few days.”

 

“Why would I do that?” There’s no inflection in Kara’s voice, no outrage, just dry curiosity. Ske recognizes that Grant has that same tone sometimes when he asks questions. Must be a specialist thing.

 

Skye shrugged, “I’m going to tell Coulson that you beat me up, Iced me, and ran away.”

 

Skye doesn’t expect the light and airy laugh that peals from the brunette as they quietly make their way into the safehouse. When the two girls get to the living room, they are both full-on laughing and Grant just looks back and forth between them like they’re aliens. 

 

Kara Palamas was going to be their secret weapon.

  
  


xXx

 

To the absolute shock of all involved parties,  _ Skye  _ is the one who calls the meeting and insists that the four of them need to establish some rules. Fitz - half seriously - offers to check her vitals when she suggests it. Of their little group of lawless heroes, Skye is the one who is the least disciplined and least concerned with any sort of rule-following.

 

Kara ran away from S.H.I.E.L.D. and joined up with their group about nine weeks ago, and in that time, she and Ward have turned into a terrifying duo of info-gathering assassins. Fitz is enough of a man to admit that he is genuinely afraid of them when they get that  _ glint  _ in their eyes. Between the two of them, they probably knew upwards of a thousand different ways to kill a man. 

 

It would be easy for Fitz to draw a line down the center of the team and paint a binary: Kara and Ward are the muscle while he and Skye were the brains, but it wasn’t that simple (Fitz is starting to realize that  _ nothing  _ is that simple). 

 

Kara and Ward both had a scarily similar skillset. Yes, they were both strong and lethal in a fight, but they were also  _ incredibly _ intelligent. They work well together and are dangerously efficient strategists. In the weeks that Kara’s been at the safehouse (they’ve taken to calling it “The Lair” - Fitz’s idea), the two of them have taken down four active Hydra compounds and one S.H.I.E.L.D. lab; the only survivors of the attacks being the two of them. The amount of hard drives and intel that they were able to gather from those raids is  _ staggering _ . 

 

Brauns  _ and  _ brains, those two. 

 

Fitz and Skye form their own little dream team. Fitz, a literal rocket scientist, provides them with weapons and tech all designed to keep them alive and in communication with one another. At the Playground, Hunter has been helping him learn to shoot, and Fitz was proud to discover that he’s an excellent shot. It’s come in handy - he has an Icer on him at all times and isn’t afraid to use it. Fitz is also the one who typically does the heavy-lifting when it comes to data analysis. He deciphers files and intel and inputs what he can when they have team brainstorming sessions.

 

And then there’s Skye. Fitz and Skye are stuck at the Playground most of the time, and she utilizes the resources there. Agent May is teaching her higher-level combat skills to build on the foundation that Ward taught her. Fitz watches her spar with various team members sometimes; she has May’s efficiency, but Ward’s recklessness. It’s easy to spot both of her mentors in her actions. 

 

In addition to combat lessons, Skye (under Coulson’s orders) has been taking shooting lessons from Trip. The lessons are  _ not  _ going well. She’s trying (and when she focuses, she’s not a bad shot at all), but Fitz knows that every time she goes to fire a gun, her brain transports her back to a certain basement. Skye knows what it feels like to have a gun kill her (enough time has passed, so Fitz can admit that Skye should probably be dead), she doesn’t want to do it to anyone else.

 

Her practical skills are only bolstered by her complete, raving  _ genius _ when it comes to computers. Fitz has lost count of the number of apps she’s developed for the team (both teams), the number of government agencies (all around the world) that she’s hacked, and the number of security measures she’s bypassed. She’s insane.

 

They were small, only a group of four, but they were dangerous. And, when you compiled all of their skills, they could be a really deadly team. 

 

But because they were all so skilled, and because of the opponents they were up against, the four of them were also constantly in danger. So Fitz understood the need for establishing some rules. Ward and Kara also conceded the same (they’ve all feared for each other’s lives).

 

So, on the first night that all four of them are at the Lair together, they drink, tease Skye and Ward for being “a disgustingly adorable couple” (Kara’s words), and spend several hours fighting and compromising over what their rules should be. In the end, the list is short and simple, but it helps ease their minds a little bit.

 

  1. Primary loyalty has to be to each other. If we run into each other on a mission, we can’t doubt our loyalties, no matter how we act to one another.
  2. Someone has to stay at the Lair at all times. For protecting our safe space and in case of backup being needed.
  3. If you aren’t at the Lair, you have to check-in with the team at least once every 24 hours (this includes Fitz and Skye at the Playground - just text or something). Additionally, everyone on the team must know if you’re going out on a mission.
  4. The Lair’s location has to stay private. No writing down or typing coordinates and no taking any S.H.I.E.L.D. vehicles directly to it.
  5. Come out of this alive.



  
  


 

xXx

 

Grant Ward has been afraid before. Of his parents. Of Garrett. Of whatever enemy he was sent out to fight. Of missions going wrong. Of letting people down. Of himself. He’s been afraid  _ of  _ a lot of things.

 

But this feeling, being afraid  _ for  _ someone, this is new to him. 

 

Everytime Skye leaves the Lair, he’s afraid for her. Anytime she’s out on a mission for Coulson, his heartbeat is irregular until she texts that she’s safe back at the Playground. When Skye’s not within his direct eyesight, he’s afraid that she will die without giving him the chance to save her. 

He still has nightmares - memories - of her laying in a pool of her own blood. He found her in that basement and almost lost her. He knows what it feels like to be told by a doctor that she wasn’t going to make it, to watch her heartbeat flatline in a med bay, to be told that she didn’t want anything to do with him. 

 

Grant knows that pain, and he never wants to feel it again.

 

But Grant Ward has discovered a new, nuanced fear. A more desperate pain. He feels it every time he sees Skye now - and he doesn’t know how to make it stop.

 

He and Kara figured out what the Inhumans were. In the last raid they did before Skye made them implement her rules, they found some files and paperwork in the S.H.I.E.L.D. lab they destroyed - one document was particularly damning. It was called the Index, a list of all individuals who had some form of powers. According to the Index, there were individuals who could create electricity, control fire, turn into water, etc. S.H.I.E.L.D. wanted these people and were experimenting on them.

 

Grant was almost certain that Skye might be Inhuman. It’s a thought he hasn’t shared with anyone, but based on Skye’s (non)reaction to the GH-325 in comparison to Garrett’s, the fact that Raina was really interested in testing her blood, and the fact that Skye could hold the Obelisk (as was accidentally found out on a mess of a mission that Coulson sent her on), he was fairly sure his girlfriend wasn’t completely human. 

 

And he was almost completely sure that Coulson knew, too. The Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. was turning Skye into his own personal weapon: teaching her to fight like May, making her do weapons training with Trip, bringing her along with him on missions, making her have frequent check-ups with Simmons - Coulson knew something. 

 

Grant had to find a way to tell Skye.

 

When he walks into his and Skye’s room after a shower, he’s not surprised to see Skye in their bed, her visits to the safehouse are rarely announced or scheduled. He  _ is  _ surprised, however, to see that she’s extremely pale and violently shaking. He rushes over to hold her, all thoughts about Inhumans and powers leaving him.

 

“Grant,” his heart breaks at the devastated and broken tone in her voice. “I killed him.”

 

He lets out a harsh exhale; this is Skye’s first killI. If he’s being honest, he knew this was coming eventually; when you’re a S.H.I.E.L.D. weapon, it’s only a matter of time until someone orders you to shoot. Not for the first time, he wishes he could trade places with his girlfriend: he’ll go to the Playground and play puppet to Coulson while Skye stays locked in the safehouse, planning missions. He wanted to protect Skye from all of the bad people and things in the world, wanted to protect her from becoming a murderer. 

 

But Grant’s not an idiot and he knows that life isn’t fair. 

 

So Grant just holds her. There’s nothing else he can do.

  
  


xXx

 

Philip Coulson wasn’t stupid; he didn’t get to be an honorary member of the Avengers, brought back to life via an untested (and admittedly unethical) brain rewriting protocol, or named the new Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. by being an idiot. 

 

He knew Skye was up to something. He just didn’t know what.

 

There was no way that she  _ just so happened  _ to disappear the same time that Grant Ward breaks out of his imprisonment. Her story about finding her parents and her contact in China totally checks out, but Coulson doesn’t believe in coincidences; she easily could have taken Ward with her.

 

Plus, there are intermittent periods of time when no one can really account for her location, despite the fact that Coulson has done everything he can to keep tabs on her (everything but stick a tracking device on her, which he  _ knew  _ would not be appreciated. He’s thought about it, though). 

 

The frustrating thing is that he has no proof of any disloyalty, no reason not to trust her. Skye did everything he asked, hacked every security system he needed her to, and successfully completes all of the missions he sends her on (without making any unscheduled stops, he checks the mileage and map history on all of the S.H.I.E.L.D. vehicles she takes). 

 

She still acts like a team player, so he has no choice but to treat her as one. But there’s something  _ different  _ about her. She’s more quiet and withdrawn than she used to be, not interacting with the rest of the team as much. She’s more focused, more agreeable. He has a feeling she’s hiding something, but he’s searched her room and looked through her laptop history, and found nothing. So Coulson treats her normally, doesn’t ask about Ward (he assumes Skye broke him out and said goodbye), and doesn’t let her know that he’s low-key investigating her. 

 

He doesn’t tell anyone at the Playground about his suspicions, it wouldn’t be good for team morale if they knew that he was investigating Skye. Besides, they had bigger things to worry about.

 

His small team, the remains of S.H.I.E.L.D. has an ally, but he doesn’t know who it is. Every Hydra facility they learn about is already demolished by the time they get there - completely burnt to the ground, all usable intel either taken or destroyed. The flames were still burning out at the last one, but there was no sign of who did it. 

 

Who was taking down Hydra? Coulson and his team was trying to figure out who these people were, he wanted to find out if they were people S.H.I.E.L.D. should join forces with, or a threat that would be coming after them next. 

 

He doubted the second, S.H.I.E.L.D.’s implosion was pretty common knowledge. 

 

Whoever these people were, they were  _ good _ . He had Fitz and Mack leading the team and developing tech to try to figure out who was doing this. S.H.I.E.L.D. needed all the help they could get. 

 

“Hey, AC,” he  _ really  _ had to talk to Skye about freely walking into his office whenever she wanted. “May wanted to know if you were going to need backup for whatever mission you’re going on tonight. She is volunteering me to be your muscle.” Skye rolls her eyes, it’s a common action that’s become more frequent as of late. 

 

But wait, was  _ Skye  _ volunteering to go with him tonight? That can’t happen. “Sorry, Skye, not tonight. This is an easy one, I can be my own muscle.” He hoped there was enough light-heartedness in his delivery. She’s been a little more suspicious since she confronted him about Ward all those months ago. 

 

He wishes she’d let that go. How does one build loyalty? Coulson’s been trying to secure Skye’s for months, it would make all of this easier. 

 

Skye eyes him for a long moment, seemingly sizing him up before responding. “Okay. Well, if you change your mind, I can be ready whenever.”

 

When Skye leaves, Phil Coulson breathes a sigh of relief. He’d like the backup, but Skye can’t come on this particular meeting. He’s meeting with a rogue Inhuman and trying to learn how terrigenesis works. He wanted to “activate” Skye’s powers and use her as a lure for the Inhumans assembled at the Afterlife. He needed to get the powered individuals under S.H.I.E.L.D.’s influence so he could use them. The Avengers were great, but fractured now. The new Inhumans Initiative would ensure that they were under the control of S.H.I.E.L.D., serve as the earth’s primary line of defense. He just needed to find them, study them, and convince them to stay in S.H.I.E.L.D. housing so they were under thumb.

 

After all, powered humans could make great soldiers, but they could also be a major threat. Better to have them contained, tagged, and surveilled than free to wreak their own havoc.

 

Coulson needed this win. S.H.I.E.L.D. needed this. He needed to prove that he was able to achieve and control something, or else he’d never get the support from the rest of the intelligence community. Was he not  _ owed  _ this victory?  _ Owed  _ this second chance? He died for this agency once. He wasn’t going to do that again without leaving his mark.

 

If he felt guilty for using Skye, well, she once fell in love with a duplicitous killer and was (maybe, probably) hiding something from him. So, fair was fair.  _Right?_

  
  


xXx

 

Leopold Fitz was a big enough person to admit that several things scared him. He’s been around gun fights, had to watch the person he love jump out of a plane when she thought she was going to be killed by some alien virus, had to do countless life-threatening things during his time on Coulson’s team.

 

But he didn’t know true terror until Skye went M.I.A. (he hasn’t heard from her in over 72 hours, which is _well_ _past_ the established rules). She and Coulson left to go on a scouting mission in Puerto Rico a week ago and he (as her mission contact) was in constant communication with her for the first three days, and then suddenly, nothing. 

 

For a while, he was reassured because Coulson kept checking-in with the Playground, insisting that everything was fine - but then 24 hours passed, and Skye missed a check-in with him and the Lair. And then she missed another. Skye wouldn’t do that to him and Kara - and  _ certainly  _ wouldn’t purposefully worry Ward.

 

When Coulson came back to the Playground without Skye - claiming that he temporarily had her working with Tony Stark on some hacking project - Fitz knew something was  _ very  _ wrong.

 

(This is the catalyst.)

  
  


xXx

 

_ “Thank you for saving me,” he whispered it into her hair as the early morning light made her hair glow. Yesterday, when they arrived at the safehouse after fleeing the Playground, he insisted they lay together in the backyard and let the light wash over them. He’d never again take the sunlight for granted. _

 

_ Skye hummed a little bit before whispering back. “Of course. I couldn’t leave you there like that. You’re mine.” _

 

_ The simple assertion startled him. Before Providence, before she was shot, before Hydra came out of the shadows, words between them were so difficult. But here they were, just the two of them in an oasis amid chaos, and she was saying what he wanted to hear.  _

 

_ “Oh, am I now?” He teased while he leaned in to tickle her side. He figured it was time for them to not be afraid to admit their feelings. They’ve been through too much.  _

 

_ She laughed before responding, grabbing his hands and lacing their fingers together. “Yeah, you’re all mine. I hope you’re okay with that, because I am tired of losing you. When I got shot, when you were Hydra, when you were in prison - it was all too much time without you. But you’re here now. And you’re mine. And I’m not ever letting you go.”  _

 

_ He smiled brightly and kissed her gently. “I love you too, Skye.”  _

  
  


xXx

 

While Grant slowly lost his mind over Skye’s disappearance, Kara kept her composure. She, Ward, and Fitz spent days brainstorming: Ward shared his suspicions about Skye being an Inhuman, which shocked Fitz and prompted him to re-read the documents on Coulson’s secret hard drive that he hacked when they first rescued Ward. Kara  looked through the files they recently retrieved from a former S.H.I.E.L.D. member’s safehouse. Something about Fitz’s description of Skye’s last mission was familiar - there was something important that the three of them were missing.

 

_ Bingo. _

 

There was a place called the Afterlife, a sort of safe haven for Inhumans. She’d bet anything that’s where Skye was.

 

Kara first learned about the Inhumans and the Afterlife while she was undercover in Hydra. S.H.I.E.L.D. needed information about how to “activate” a dormant Inhuman’s powers, and they wanted to find the Afterlife to observe how they helped the powered individuals through the transformation. 

 

But the Inhumans were skeptical of being found - rightly so, in Kara’s opinion. And the Afterlife’s location wasn’t known to any “normal” person, so no one knew where it was. 

 

Lucky for them, Kara was neither a loner nor an idiot; and she called in a favor from Raina. Within two hours, Kara knew what happened to Trip, to Skye and Raina, and the purpose of that damn Obelisk. Poor Skye. Kara spent a full day deciding whether or not it would be better if they just life her in the Afterlife. She’d learn how to use her powers and would be safe from S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra. There were worse things.

 

...until she saw the looks on Ward and Fitz’s faces. To them, there weren’t worse things than losing Skye. So, she plans a way to lure the Inhumans out.

 

It takes almost three months for Skye to leave the Afterlife and respond to one of their lures. During those months, their team of vigilantes plotted various setups, staging odd occurrences, to try and draw out the Inhumans. Their plans are only marginally effective: it works, but different powered people come each time. And so does S.H.I.E.L.D. There have been way too many gunfights, stitches, and close calls for Kara. 

 

As if the plotting and worry and fighting wasn’t hard enough, Kara had the primary task during the months of Skye’s absence of keeping Ward alive. The former black-ops specialist was a reckless fighter naturally, his lack of self-care was amplified tenfold now that he had something to lose. 

 

Sometimes, Kara feels like a glorified babysitter and she allows herself to wonder if this is what it’s like to have siblings. At some point, those three idiots who saved her became her family. Her overprotective brother, slightly unhinged sister-in-law (because, let’s face it, if their lives were any simpler, Skye and Ward would be married with a yard of dogs and gorgeous little ones), and raving genius cousin.

 

She’ll be  _ damned  _ if S.H.I.E.L.D. takes any of them away from her.

 

It happens in a forest in the middle of winter. Fitz has designed a flamethrower that leaves biologic signatures - on all tech, the flames read as having come from a person. The response comes quickly: a violent tremble spreads across the forest floor, triggering packs of snow to drop from the trees. Kara is the only one on-site: Fitz is at the Playground, trying to stall S.H.I.E.L.D. from responding to their trap, while Grant stays at the safehouse. Rules.

 

As the earth quakes, and snow falls on her, Kara just runs - her only focus is not getting buried alive. She runs and weaves and dodges falling trees until she spots Skye: standing calm and looking completely unaffected by the chaos around her.

 

_ I guess we know what her power is. _

 

When the two women lock eyes, Skye cries. It’s the first time Kara’s seen the self-proclaimed hacktivist this emotional and she forces her own tears away. She’s so relieved to see her friend, that it takes her a minute to realize that Skye was taking a knife to her arm. 

 

“What the  _ hell  _ are you doing?” Kara is  _ not  _ proud of how panicked her voice sounds.

 

“They’re tracking me, one of them can teleport. I don’t want to disappear again.” 

 

Digging a tracker out of Skye’s arm and giving her some very rudimentary stitches (it’s too cold out here to make her fingers fully cooperate) is  _ not  _ how Kara saw this day going.  

 

The two girls take a circuitous route back to the safehouse, spending three nights in various motels to make sure they weren’t being followed. When they do eventually stumble through their front door, dirty and exhausted, Kara is roughly shoved aside by an unshaven Grant Ward who quickly looks over his girlfriend and hugs her tight against him. 

 

“You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay.” Ward cries as he repeatedly whispers to himself. It’s a moment Kara shouldn’t be watching and she makes to go and shower off the rescue mission.

 

As she walks out of the room, she catches Skye’s eyes over Ward’s shoulder. The younger girl mouths the words  _ thank you _ to Kara, and the former S.H.I.E.L.D. specialist recognizes it as gratitude not just for the rescue, but for taking care of Ward. 

 

Kara winks in response and makes sure to relay the good news to Fitz.

  
  


xXx

 

Turns out, Skye’s time at the Afterlife caused some serious emotional damage. Grant kept Fitz informed of the Skye situation while he stayed behind at the Playground, helping Coulson’s team plan and execute fake rescue attempts at finding Skye. They all decided it was for the best that Skye stay at the safehouse and continue to let Coulson consider her M.I.A. 

 

Another five months go by slowly. Fitz spends that time spying on May and Coulson at the Playground. Ward and Kara spend it planning and systematically crossing off Hydra bases. Skye spends it healing and having nightmares about Trip and a girl named Daisy. Fitz feels for her, the girl spends her whole life feeling unwanted, finds her parents, and has to watch one of them go under T.A.H.I.T.I. while the other tries to kill her. 

 

Meanwhile, Coulson is waiting for her to perfect her skills before hunting her down to join his team and trick the rest of her kind into becoming S.H.I.E.L.D.’s prisoner-soldiers.

 

When did life get so crazy?

  
  


xXx

 

Agent Phil Coulson got a lead on the location of the Afterlife and was currently stationed outside what he believed was the secret entrance to the Inhumans’ sanctuary. The last known Hydra location fell yesterday to the mystery team and, without any of that intel, Coulson really needed a win - and wrangling the Inhumans would be that win. He was determined.

 

The situation was made more complicated by his (old) team: what did he do so wrong that inspired this kind of disloyalty from them? In the months that Skye has been “missing” (Coulson knew that she was safely at the Afterlife, learning to control her powers and making friends with the other powered individuals), the team has largely disbanded. 

 

Trip was dead (he wasn’t supposed to follow Skye to Puerto Rico), Mack left, and Jemma was growing so suspicious she was no longer cooperating with the new med team he assembled just for this Inhumans project. May left a few days ago, got picked up by Natasha. In the back of Coulson’s mind, he wondered if that call was something he’d need to worry about. But Coulson had an army of new S.H.I.E.L.D. recruits and a mission to accomplish, so he didn’t pay her much attention.

 

Turns out, that was his fatal mistake.

 

(This is how it happens.) 

 

Coulson’s Afterlife stake-out suddenly - and quickly - turned into a battlefield. Inhumans came out of nowhere, fighting his team ruthlessly. Coulson watched from a distance as he tried to force his brain to catch up with what was going on. But all brain function stopped when he looked up to a sight he never wanted to see.

 

There, standing opposite him in a battle, clasping hands with Ward, was Skye. 

 

Skye, the girl he once vowed to protect, looking ready to kill him. Coulson thinks this is the first time in his life that he really understands betrayal.

 

xXx

 

Fitz hates sitting in the van while the rest of his team is fighting. Logically, he knows that it’s not a snub. Skye, Kara, and Grant all have superior fight skills than him. And at least half of their battle strategy was reliant on technology that he built, so he understands why he has to stay behind.

 

But what Skye, Kara, and Grant don’t understand is that the waiting is agonizing. While he’s watching video and flying drones and tracking and unlocking doors and talking over the comms, in the back of his mind are all of these awful scenarios. The compound will explode, killing his team. Or Skye will get captured, making Ward fall apart.

 

As he runs this part of the operation, he is disgustingly aware of just how many ways there are to die.

  
  


xXx

 

Hydra has long-since collapsed, thanks to his and Kara’s efforts tearing down their compounds one by one. They were no longer a threat to anyone. 

 

And after today, neither was S.H.I.E.L.D. After the battle, the Inhumans crawl back to the Afterlife, they only suffered one casualty. 

 

Agent May, who was surprisingly on the side of tearing down S.H.I.E.L.D. and was serving as a mole for the Avengers, was still alive.

 

Mack might lose an arm, but he’s alive.

 

The four of them - the team of vigilantes - are (mercifully) all alive. Sure, they were sporting some battle scars and emotional damage, but they were all alive.

 

Coulson is not, he got caught in one of Skye’s quakes. It’s an ironic way to go and Ward recognizes it. Maybe one day, when this isn’t so fresh on their minds, they’ll find a way to laugh about it. Maybe.

 

Technically, they win. But there is no celebrating. Ward thinks he feels relieved, but he isn’t sure. Too much is going on. The remnant S.H.I.E.L.D. agents are being wrangled up and carted to the Fridge for questioning; the new team wants to figure out what Coulson’s been up to all this time. May, Jemma, and Mack are mourning Coulson (if Ward is being honest, he thinks his old boss was better off dead the first time. Not everyone deserved a second chance back from the dead.) 

 

No Coulson. No Hydra. No S.H.I.E.L.D. No more living in secret. No more hiding. No more strategizing, planning, or imprisonment. It’s a clean slate - and it scares him a bit. 

 

Frankly, it scares him a lot.

 

What happens now?

  
  


xXx

 

The Avengers are charged with rebuilding S.H.I.E.L.D., and it’s the best idea that Kara has ever heard.

 

The organization was Cap’s girl’s baby, he’d take care of it. Natasha would make sure things were legal. Hill would help. Stark and Banner would outfit the agents with the best technology. The organization will go back to their job: protection. Protecting the world from all of the crazy alien tech that seems to be in never-ending assault of the planet.

 

The four of them are approached to help. Kara immediately says yes - after an extended vacation. Fitz also agrees. She knows that he wants to help Jemma. Apologize. Try to rebuild that relationship.

 

He deserves it. Kara will find it somewhere in herself to be charitable to Jemma; the scientist was only guilty of placing her loyalty in the wrong man.

 

It’s probably sad that she was so willing to run back to the organization that got her brainwashed and tried to kill her several times, but Kara doesn’t have much of anything left to believe in, and she thinks this third iteration of S.H.I.E.L.D. could be great once they recommitted to their purpose and had strong leaders that would build it properly. 

 

If Kara contributes anything, she’s going to encourage Cap to change the name to Shield, the acronym was a pain in the ass and the name works just as a word. Shield. They’d go back to protecting the normal humans from the powered ones, from the Trickster gods, from the alien invasions. Who knows, maybe someday they’ll partner with the Afterlife and utilize the Inhumans, not as weapons, but as friends, defenders, and heroes.

 

She notices that neither Skye nor Grant give an answer about returning. Kara isn’t at all surprised. She thinks they’ll be back eventually, but isn’t holding her breath. If they come back, it’s going to be years from now.

 

“Hey.” For being so skilled in espionage, Grant Ward had very distinct footsteps. 

 

“Hey, you.” The two sit and look at the sky in companionable silence. After a few minutes, she quietly asks, “So, how soon until you and Skye ship out and leave us?” It’s delivered playfully with a small shoulder nudge, but the pain is unmistakable. It’s been the four of them against the world for well over a year now. Separation feels weird. 

 

Ward’s response is to let out a long sigh. If you listen carefully, Kara swears you could hear  _ years  _ of relief and agony being expelled with the carbon dioxide. 

 

She can’t  _ imagine  _ how Ward feels now that it’s the end. It’s a clean slate for them all, and she thinks that probably he’s going to take it the worst. They aren’t vigilantes anymore, they aren’t science experiments, victims of brainwashing, weapons or prisoners anymore. 

 

They’re just  _ people _ . People who might one day be considered heroes, if you squint and look between the lines of the battle.

 

Kara Palamas doesn’t quite know what to do with that.

  
  


xXx

 

_ “When you were living in your van, how did you imagine your life would go? I assume taking down government agencies and having super powers wasn’t on the list.” _

 

_ “Not exactly,” she chuckles as she rolls over to sprawl across him in bed. Grant cuddled. It still kind of surprised her. “To be honest, I didn’t know what I wanted. I just wanted to survive and do something good in the world.” _

 

_ Grant rubs her back as he considers her answer. “What about now? When all of this is over, what do you think you want?” _

 

_ If she’s honest, Skye hasn’t given any thought to what she might do after this whole mess with  Hydra, S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Inhumans was sorted. When she joined S.H.I.E.L.D., she assumed that was where she’d spend the rest of her life, but now that she’s left it, everything was so  _ open _. She really could do anything.  _

 

_ “I don’t know. I kinda miss my van, going on a road trip across the country sounds really nice. Settling down by the ocean, praying that the ocean water will help make me feel clean again one day.”  _

 

_ “That sounds nice,” Grant whispers into her neck.  _

 

_ “I think,” Skye mutters with a hint of nervousness in her voice, “I think, if you were interested, that you should come with me. We could adopt a dog and take it with us. Spend some time being normal tourists who are exploring. No government agencies, no powers, no spying. What do you think?” _

 

_ She’s a little thrown off by Grant’s full-bodied laughter. Why would he laugh at that, can he really not picture his life without black kevlar?  _

 

_ Her worries are quickly silenced when Grant rolls them over and soundly kisses her. “Oh, Skye,” he says as he brushes her hair off of her face and cups her cheeks. “No matter what you said, I was coming with you. I’ve thought about it and when all of this is over, I just want you.” _

 

_ “I love you.” In the chaos, loving Grant Ward was sometimes the only thing that made any sense.  _

  
  


xXx

 

Two days after the battle, Fitz returned to the safehouse to pick up some of his stuff - and to see if that’s where Skye and Ward were hiding out. He sincerely doubted it (none of the four of them were eager to spend any more time there), but seeing as neither he nor Kara had seen or heard from them since they went for drinks after it all ended, Fitz figured it was worth a shot to check. 

 

As expected, the house was completely void of all of their belongings. Fitz expected this, but was still surprised at how much it hurt.

 

He was slowly walking through the house, gathering some of his stuff, remembering everything that happened, and cataloging what stories he’d tell Jemma when he spotted the phone and envelope on the kitchen table. Scrawled in Ward’s precise handwriting on the envelope were his and Kara’s nicknames from their secret battle communications. He scowled at the “Snow White” written above “Lilo,” Fitz’s princess nickname always made him roll his eyes and, if he didn’t know it was given lovingly, he might be offended at it.

 

Inside the envelope was nothing more than a scrap of paper with a poem fragment scratched on it (Skye’s writing was so much harder to read than Ward’s). The words made him smile; they’ll be back. When they’re ready to be found, they’ll be back. 

 

_ For whatever we lose(like a you or a me), _

_ It’s always ourselves we find in the sea. _

  
  
  
  



End file.
